Kremerata Baltica’s latest CD continues theme of seasons

Egils Kaljo | July 30, 2015

Latvian born violinist Gidon Kremer, along with his Baltic chamber orchestra Kremerata Baltica, have released a new CD entitled New Seasons on the Deutsche Grammophon label.

The CD collects recordings of works by Philip Glass, Arvo Pärt, Giya Kancheli, and Shigeru Umebayashi. According to Kremer, the goal of the collection is ‘to show that emotional music can be felt by and resonate with literally everyone’.

The album’s feature work is American composer Philip Glass’ Violin Concerto No. 2 ‘The American Four Seasons’, which was composed in 2009 as a companion to Antonio Vivaldi’s ‘The Four Seasons’. However, Glass has not labeled which season is associated with which movement, and has left it up to the listener to decide.

The album continues the theme of the seasons, following up on previously released albums Vivaldi and Piazzolla: Eight Seasons (2000) and Russian Seasons (2003).

The album notes contain an essay on the compositions and their selection by Kremer in English, German and French.

Egils Kaljo is an American-born Latvian from the New York area who lives in Rīga, Latvia. When not working in the information technology field, he sings in the Latvian Academy of Culture mixed choir Sõla, does occasional translation work, and has been known to sing and play guitar at the Folkklubs Ala Pagrabs in Old Rīga. Kaljo began listening to Latvian music as soon as he was able to put a record on a record player, and still has old Bellacord 78 rpm records lying around somewhere.